The semiconductor chips have at least one power supply electrode for applying a supply potential and one power output electrode for transmitting an output current to power outputs of the semiconductor module and a control electrode.
Such a semiconductor module can be used as half bridge assembly and, for switching electrical powers, has at least two semiconductor switches which are connected in series for forming half bridges. For this purpose, the half bridge assembly has three electrically conductive rails which are arranged adjacently to one another in parallel. On a centrally arranged power output rail, low-side switches (LSS) of the half bridge are arranged. On a parallel high-potential supply rail mounted on the side of this, high-side switches (HSS) are arranged and a parallel low-potential supply rail mounted oppositely supplies power electrodes on the top side of the LSS switches via bonds. In addition, the power electrodes on the top side of the HSS switches are electrically connected to the central power output rail via wire bonds.
In such a semiconductor module, it is not possible to access the power output electrodes of a number of LSS switches individually. It is thus not possible to drive individual nodes of a number of half bridge circuits.
Finally, the control electrodes cannot be accessed in the same plane as the power supply rails or the power output terminals. Instead, this requires planes stacked above one another. The control electrodes of the semiconductor chips can only be accessed via a stacked control plane which is arranged on an insulation layer stacked on the electrically conductive rails. Thus, these cannot be driven individually, either, but can only be reached via common feed lines. This considerably restricts the possible uses of such a semiconductor module and does not permit any drive modifications on a circuit board.
Other semiconductor modules have external contact arrangements or so-called “footprints” which are so disadvantageous that the rewiring effort by corresponding conductor track runs on a higher-level circuit board is considerable. This requires additional board surface which does not allow the current and voltage supply in on-board systems and/or in converters such as AC/DC and/or DC/DC to be made more compact.